This was published in the TimesLive on 05 November 2024.
As South Africans
celebrate or reflect on the 100 days and counting of the GNU, it is essential
to pause and ask, what does the GNU mean for South African politics? Like any
system, especially within the context of politics, the GNU is growing into a catastrophically
fragile ensemble that can suddenly lurch into chaos without anyone having
anticipated it as a result of an accumulation of factors. From its inception,
the GNU has displayed characteristics of a construct born out of unexpected,
unforeseen, and discrete transformations. It has the makings of the
structural modification of an elite consensus without generating noises
associated with the change of its magnitude.
The GNU is a political realignment masterpiece
that constitutes the future's historical infrastructure, not its ephemeral
surface. It is a convergence of former political adversaries negotiating a
new vector of growth and development outside the binaries of misapplied
ideological consensuses. Its success depends on macroeconomic
stability, the implementation of structural reforms, the support of
growth-enhancing public infrastructure, and (acutely) the building of the
state's capability.
In a world where no
political movement or ideology is succeeding in direct social and political
capital formation, the concept of authority is vulnerable to the extent to
which it can prevail. Democracy, construed as arrangements to govern each
other, and still in the parlance of the government of-for-by the people,
can be both an anarchy and an order-sustaining context. The unhappiness about
the carelessness of the efficiencies of the market in an environment where the
incompetence of the (liberal) democratic orders is failing those that make the
poverty-unemployment-inequality statistical nexus begs the question, to what
end is the GNU?
Due to the
absence of a party with absolute majority governing power, its celebration
may manifest a loss of the sense of reality about what is
politically unfolding in RSA. It is now a standard course that those on the
political precipice have succeeded in persuading themselves that the
threatening political catastrophe, total loss of power, will not happen, and
their perceived claims of political power eternity are irreversible. The belief
in the impenetrability of the proverbial fortress is growing at the same speed
and proportion to how the outer layers of the guarding walls are being taken
down. The arrogant ignorance of warnings that signal a ready fuse to pull and
start a social revolution within what the constitutional order provides reflects
how the RSA elite consensus is a colossus with feet of clay.
As the majority party,
the ANC characterises the GNU as a tactical necessity. To the extent that
the pursued end of the tactic is to retain a proportionate majority influence
over state power, which is a fundamental gain of the continuous struggle to
transfer power to "we the people", the tactic is inarguably
plausible. The tactical move to curate the executive authority of the Republic
in the hands of the ANC President was a genius consolidation of power behind
the symbolism that undergirds it when it is in the hands of the ANC. The
perception of continued power was maintained, whence efforts were made to
fracture the hegemony-preserving façade by the GUN
partner-cum-adversaries.
The risky collateral to
the tactical genius is the comfort of incumbency that comes with it. The
illusion of indefinite support that has set in already in 2016 and 2021 in
major metropolitan centres can only thicken, commensurate with the shrinking
capability of the party machinery to grow while sustaining an otherwise
dwindling political power. It is not only a capable state at issue, but a
capable political party machinery is also the underlying cancer. The
illusion of believing in the new youth's (Tintswalos) exuberance towards the
struggle to complete the transfer of outstanding power and economic and
social control might be the beginning of a new era without apartheid-era
encumbrances. The rise of personalities as embodiments of political power and
authority, which discounts the government for the people, is fast choking the
ideational and ideological growth of the ANC as the leader of the GNU.
As the cyclone of politics, which is firmly inside the ANC-led liberation movement complex, which inarguably includes the new MK Party, the EFF, and the UDM, grows into a catastrophic storm, the hegemonic battle to prevail over RSA is being perfected in urban South Africa. The exigencies of running a state position the ANC as the pinnacle of an economic establishment that is otherwise working hard to work with a weaker than current ANC. To the disgruntled, the ANC is the system against which any complaint about economic opportunities is directed.
In the unfolding
innovation in information technologies, ideological and hegemonic warfare will
largely lay the groundwork for the broader victory against the ongoing moral
high ground the ANC still commands to govern and the prejudice against the
DA-led pre-May 2024 opposition complex. In its current light opposition
condition, what emerges strongly is uncompromising strategic intent to use
massive psychological manipulation of the population to destabilise the ANC as
the leader of society.
Comments
Post a Comment